I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was in five years old.
That winter, I asked my dad how Santa could come down our chimney since we didn’t have one. My dad explained that our chimney was inside the wall and that Santa would still come through the wall.
That made no sense to me. Our wall was solid – there was nowhere for Santa to fit through. Also I wondered how Santa could know if I was naughty or nice when he lived at the North Pole.
A few weeks later, when a classmate told me that Santa was made up and that my parents gave me Christmas presents, I was not surprised.
I had even more doubts about God than I had about Santa.
I was raised Catholic. I went to church every week. I attended weekly catechism classes to be indoctrinated in the Catholic faith. I spent two dreadful years in Catholic school. I was baptized, received holy communion and took classes for confirmation.
Throughout all of this, whenever I questioned anything about God, I was told I needed to have faith.
I was taught it was sinful, evil or wrong to question Catholic teachings. Even so, I couldn’t help but question things like:
- Mary had a baby but she was a virgin and never had sex.
- Jesus came to life three days after he died.
- Jesus turned water into wine and fed thousands with a few fishes and loaves of bread.
- He also walked on water.
- Moses parted the sea so his people could walk through it and then he unparted it to drown his enemies.
- God is kind and loving. Except in the Bible when he tortures Job, kills armies, sends angels to slay people etc.
- Terrible, tragic things don’t happen because God is capricious or mean – we just don’t understand these “mysteries” because we are fallible human beings incapable of understanding God’s ways.
My own experiences led to more questions:
- When I prayed for something, why did it never happen?
- Why does God let people starve to death?
- Why can’t God keep my parents together?
- Why am I punished for something Adam and Eve did?
- Where do the dinosaurs fit into all of this?
- How can God be kind and allow innocent people to die from natural disasters, murder and tragedies?
And finally, no matter how hard I prayed, how good I tried to be and how much I went to church, God never delivered what I wanted:
- I wanted my parents to stay together. They divorced. Twice.
- I wanted to stay in my hometown. We moved 100s of miles away.
- I wanted to own a house. We rented from slumlords.
- I wanted my stepfather to stop beating our dog. He still beat the dog regularly.
- I wanted my girlfriend to marry me. She broke up with me.
- I wanted to be rich. I was poor.
God was used to discipline and control me – especially when I was little.
Once, when I told my Aunt that church was boring (it was), she told me never to say that or I’d go to hell.
Another time, when I was caught lying, my grandmother touched her fingers to my temples and said , “I feel horns growing. That’s the devil inside you.”
When I stole 50 cents for ice cream – I was told I’d go to hell and burn forever.
Most of the time in church, I played shadow puppets with my hands and tried to stay awake until I could get out of there.
By the time I reached 5th grade, my mother stopped going to church but sent my sister and on our own. I’d sneak out to go light fires in the back alley with my friends.
When I was 44, I stopped believing in God.
That may be surprising since I had always believed in God. Even though I doubted most of the “miracles” in the Bible and almost all of the practices of the Catholic Church, I still prayed and believed there was a higher being in control of the world.
When I got sober, it was with the help of a faith based program. I had a strong reliance on God that helped me get through many tough times.
That faith worked for me. I saw it work for others too.
But over time, my faith trickled away. It was replaced by science, facts, history and personal experiences.
I was agnostic for years before I became an atheist.
In my Religious Philosophy class in college, I learned that many Christian “holy dates” (including Christmas and Easter) were chosen to coincide with the celebration dates from pagan religions so that pagans could be converted more easily.
I studied how religion was used as a political weapon to control the poor and the masses.
I learned that the Bible was written by many people, some of who lived 100s of years apart.
All of this made me question religion as well as my own beliefs.
I started to see the world as it was, not as I wished it would be
As I grew older, I saw hurricane Katrina devastate New Orleans. Then the Tsunami in Indonesia killed over 200,000.
Then my step daughter died. My first dog died. My second dog died. Our two cats died.
My wife nearly died from an infection. Then she got lymphoma. She had two back surgeries that left her partially disabled.
Then she got lung cancer and I watched her suffer for 9 months before dying in 2018.
It was a few years before my wife got lung cancer, that I stopped believing in God.
Life is precious. Nature can be beautiful. Both can also be random, unpredictable and vicious.
My wishes have nothing to do with reality. I can wish, I can pray and I can practice magic thinking as much as possible. None of it has any impact on reality.
I don’t believe in the afterlife either.
If there was an afterlife, I am certain my wife would have contacted me. She loved me too much to let me suffer.
Following the same logic, Liz, my wife’s daughter, would have contacted my wife.
My Great Aunt and Uncle who loved me more than anything would have contacted me.
And so on. And so on.
Instead of an afterlife, what remains are ashes in boxes and rotting corpses buried in the ground.
What matters isn’t the afterlife – what matters is how they lived their days on earth.
Their afterlife is in my heart, in the memories I cherish and the love we shared.
There is no neat and tidy way to end this essay.
For my readers who believe in God, I wish you no offense. Religion and belief have given purpose, direction and peace to many people – including me at times.
For the doubters, I hope you find your way – wherever it leads you.
As for me, I no longer believe